Page 17 - URA Annual Report 2020-21

Through the promotion of the NSBR and our continuous enhancements to the Building Rehabilitation Platform, we aim to transform the URA from being an ‘administrator’ of rehabilitation subsidy schemes to a ‘facilitator’ of preventive building maintenance, taking measures to enhance the skills of owners and OCs in organising building maintenance works, including their ability to initiate and arrange such works by themselves in different phases of the rehabilitation cycle. Furthermore, we will strengthen our application of new technologies by creating a virtual environment to simulate the pace of ageing of old buildings, as well as assess the cost and extent of building rehabilitation plans more comprehensively and accurately. Efforts will also be made to promote a ‘preventive maintenance’ model based on building condition data, so that appropriate maintenance works can be carried out before ageing occurs. Through this, we aim to achieve our long-term goal of slowing down the ageing of existing buildings in older urban areas.
Digitised district planning for effective formulation of urban renewal plans
To speed up the pace of urban renewal, the URA will include planning studies of sizeable scale in its Corporate Plan for the next five years. Faced with the vast amount of planning information involving complex domains, we must enhance our data processing and analysis capabilities.
To this end, we developed an Urban Renewal Information System (URIS) based on Geographic Information System (GIS) technology in 2019. The URIS integrates geographic information and data on such parameters as land use, planning requirements, development density, road networks, infrastructure, building conditions and population distribution, and visualises different sets of information on a map. This enables our team to review and analyse these parameters more precisely, and
formulate comprehensive urban renewal solutions to address the needs of the community for sustainable development.
Applying URIS in district-based redevelopment projects in Kowloon City.
With the help of the URIS, the URA has carried out large-scale planning studies in Yau Ma Tei, Mong Kok, Sham Shui Po, Wong Tai Sin, Kowloon City and Hong Kong Island East, processing all available planning data for some 250 hectares of urban area. By making full use of the URIS, the time required for collating preliminary planning proposals with different scales and development parameters has been greatly reduced, enabling us to identify suitable projects in a timely fashion and upgrade them to the ‘Project Reserve’ system for detailed design, technical research and feasibility assessment.
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“Faced with the vast amount of planning information involving complex domains, we must enhance our data processing and analysis capabilities.”
Managing Director’s Statement Operating Review Corporate Sustainability Management Discussion and Analysis Projects at a Glance Corporate Governance